Channeling, from what I’ve observed, is a way of tapping into deeper insights, whether the person doing the channeling interprets them as being from the Higher Self,  a dark but highly evolved corner of the brain, a spirit guide, or some sort of alien entity.  Honestly, I don’t care so much about how the person perceives the insights they share as I do the message they have to offer.

I’ll include of few of my favorites in this post, by the way. RuneHealing’s new channeling videos are now up on Youtube, though you may already be familiar with his meditations to clear negativity and his energy work videos.

As an observer, I’ve noted a few things about people who channel that have helped me distinguish real from fraud.

1. The message itself tends to contain information or insights that the person wouldn’t normally know or know how to express. I’ve seen teens do this, and there is just no way they would ever know such information on their own. Sometimes it’s private information; sometimes it’s very wise insights. It’s amusing to hear a 14-year-old deliver an incredibly beautiful and insightful message and then ask the adults present what it means. The real-deal folks tend to be very consistent in their messages.  I’ve followed the teachings of one particular channeler for the last decade and the message never falters, unlike with just about every other teacher or preacher I’ve know whose message changes at least slightly as they grow and change as individuals.  The source of the information, whether Higher Self or  guide or what, very definitely seems to be a different personality to me, at least in the cases where I know the channeler well. Not radically different but at least as different as a sibling or twin.

2. Very often, the voice and sometimes vocabulary will change. Those who listen to Esther Hicks of Abraham-Hicks when she channels are familiar with the change in voice to a clipped “Good morning” of “Abraham.”  To me, the vocal change has been the most notable difference in people I’ve known personally who do this.  I can tell they are tapped in or hooked in or connected to this source of insights when their voices change, usually to something lower and with a different tenor or texture.  I’ve worked with new channelers who were completely unaware of the vocal change until I brought it to their attention.

3.  Often, but not every time, I will notice a change in the channeler’s eyes.  I’ve seen pupils widen many times.  Other times, they stare at a spot in space, lost in a trance-like meditative state.  Again, this isn’t every time, but for a couple of people I know well, it’s been a startling thing to witness and usually matches the vocal change.

Do I channel?  Hmmm, not in the sense I describe above, but I understand it moreso as a writer and often…as a very good friend.

I have written books that felt like SERVICE.  Like a mission.  I had to work at those books.  Other books, I have felt as if I was tapping in to something that was both deep within or far outside myself. When my Lauren Hartford writing team decided to put together our pagan/Universal Law “instructional novel,”   Fire Burning in Water, I finished my part of the novel in a matter of days, with almost no editing required for my part.  The words just rushed out onto the page with no pre-planning.  It was more like transcribing the story as someone else told me, even though I didn’t hear words….just knew the next thing.   I could not hold back.  I HAD to write, even though I didn’t know what was coming next.  My part of the story was not exactly uplifting (it’s an alternate reality with some retro-causal theory thrown in), and I found that my part of the story was upsetting to me.  While I was writing it, I could not get a long-lost friend out of my mind.   A very bizarre experience for me!   As a group, we decided to change up my  part of the story just a little but it’s still essentially as I received (?) and wrote it.  About 2 years later, I received news on my old friend and his disturbing situation.  Almost everything I had written had come true for him in the month before the news and secrets I had never expected played out just as they had in the book. 

Was I channeling a spirit guide or alien entity?  Um, not that I’m aware of!  Maybe it was just a matter of tapping into something I recognized about that person at a subconscious level and letting it out before I was willing to recognize his secrets and addictions on a conscious level. 

The way I most commonly am accused of channeling is when I’m writing a heartfelt letter, usually an email because I have awful penmanship and keyboards let me move fast.  Sometimes, it’s like I have to say something to them and don’t know what’s coming out.  I simply start typing and hit send when I’m done…and find out later that I’ve freaked them out a bit because I’ve told them something way too personal that I didn’t know and given them help with a situation that I had no idea existed.  I do have to be careful with that in my novels, because I will have someone on my mind while I write and later will be accused of spilling their secrets when they’ve never  told me.

Again, I don’t really consider those examples to be channeling in the way we normally think of channeling.  It’s just a feeling of “must…write…this…now.”   Then I write stinging or unusual insights. My voice is my writing voice and yes, I do get intently focused and trance-like when I’m writing like crazy, so maybe it is.    

But think about it.  We all probably tap into that insightful source–wherever it originates–more than we realize.  Some capture that in video; others in writing.  I’m sure artists and musicians do the same.  It’s a flow of creative energy to me, but I’d love to hear from more scientific minds on how they express “channeled” thoughts.

I’m going to start a little “competition”…sort of a fantasy American Idol or X Factor.   Just something fun to explore some new…different….er, eclectic music.

Vote for your favorite  by leaving a comment about the one you like best (no comments on the others).  Positive only.  It may be a great singing voice, a song that moves you, or something no one else could guess and you can’t defend.  The purpose is to enjoy something that touches you in some way…then ask yourself why.  (You can leave comments below or via Facebook or twitter–wherever you see the post.

This week’s songs were chosen at random…in spite of somewhat un-cheery feel of them!

1. Rosewood Casket

2. Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)

3. Pumped Up Kicks

4. Put the Bottle Down

5. Ae Fond Kiss

Solstice ritual circle set-up.  Fire pit in the center of the circle, holiday lights around the circle and path.

Now for the rest of Lorna’s Rules to Behaving Yourself in Circle, and while  it’s a long and painful list of don’ts, it’s most painful because of the need to ask people to behave.

#6.  Don’t make sex part of the event unless it’s supposed to be. When the group leader schedules the Great Rite as part of the event, no problem.  When distracted members are going at it like bunnies in the closet, it’s time for them to get a room…elsewhere.

This was why my second circle ended. One of our more prominent members, a middle-aged woman, began an affair and hid it from her husband by telling him she was at events at my house, whether she was or not.  She lied to him, she lied to me, I worked with her husband, he blamed me for their break-up, drama ensued, etc, etc.   The first time I realized the boyfriend was more than just an interested guest, I was giving a workshop on astrology.  I happened to glance up at a small sea of interested faces and noticed that the boyfriend had snuggled up behind her and was busily squeezing her double-D’s.  I had just divorced and was celibate at the time, so my train of thought went right out the window!   Within a few weeks, their public displays had become so blatant that most of the group members felt too uncomfortable around them.  I failed to kick them out early enough. I ended their participation and the friendship as well, but by then, the circle had dissipated.

Still, the public groping does not compare to her and the boyfriend sneaking away while the rest of us were in an intense working.  Imagine hearing howls–a la Porky’s Lassie scene–while you’re conducting a banishing.

#7. Don’t bring drugs to the ritual or workshop.  Seriously.  I may not care what you do on your own time or in your own home, but please don’t bring illegal substances onto my property.  I work for the military, as do other members of my circle, and your insistence that no one tell you what to do can have tremendous ramifications on our careers, reputations, and finances.  Park down the street, leave it in your car or hide it in the woods, and walk to my house.

#8.  Don’t get naked unless your group leader says it’s okay.  Don’t insist that you absolutely must be skyclad for a ritual or some other pagan event.  That may or may not be the practice of a particular group.   Be especially vigilant if there are children around.  I bowed out of a much-anticipated pagan community camping trip during the time my divorce was going on because two male campers  in their 20’s insisted they would go naked if they damned well pleased and there was nothing us prudes could do to stop them. The camp coordinator had purposely set up a separate area for “natural” enjoyment of the weekend, away from the family/children area, but they told us they would not abide by it and those of us with kids should “get over it.”  Since my soon-to-be-ex had just discovered Christianity, I was the (gasp) witch and therefore questionable parent,  and custody issues were being decided, I stayed home with my kids as did most of the others with children.  That was my prerogative, though–I was a participant but not the leader of the group.  It was also the end of my family’s involvement with that group.

#9.  Don’t come to circle drunk. I know, I know.  I’m the one who made the joke about “Friends don’t let friends astral project and drive.” I’m not against drinking and do serve wine at some Sabbat feasts as well as champagne at my Burning Bowl Ritual for Winter Solstice.  Being too drunk to stand up in ritual is more than just bad form–it’s a numbing of the senses and the group energy.  I have found that many things can affect energy in circle–too much sugar, alcohol, drugs, anger, jealousy.  The problem with drinking too much is that people tend to either get sloppy or mean.  You don’t want to trip and fall in the bonfire (kinda the first rule of not burning a witch).  While that hasn’t happened in any circles I’ve been in, I have seen participants show up tanked and spend the evening making cutting remarks about and even to the leader of the circle.

#10. Don’t carry on side conversations or interrupt with pithy observations. Do you really need to be a comedian during a ritual for healing?  Yes, we know you’re there and in need of attention and  want to have your existence validated, but your antics distract from the focus of energy.  If you want to know why something is done a certain way, wait until the ritual is over and ask.  Don’t disrupt the flow of energy to ask a basic question, especially if your High Priestess expects you to know that answer due to actual study.  Learning is  a wonderful thing, but it can be done silently, too.  As for other side conversations, I can’t think of a single time that it would be appropriate to discuss a football game, your former friend’s pregnant teen, your idiot boss, or Newt vs Mitt while the High Priest is performing an altar devotional.

#11.  Don’t assume that because you’re older, you are an Elder to the group. This rule is for older participants who are new to working with groups, particularly multi-generational groups.  My current group has one of the sweetest, gentlest older women I have ever known.  She is not a spiritual leader and is usually very much in the background in the group–and then she opens her mouth and spouts incredible insights.  I’ve never seen her order around the younger group members or pretend she knew what they should do with their lives.  However, I have had temporary members (on probation, yes) who took it on themselves to tell my 20-somethings how to live or what to do that would have been great advice in 1975.  They could not understand that my students were not showing up at a workshop to hear their advice.  These Baby Boomers were neophytes on this path, not Elders.  Ironically, that lack of respect for their teacher and other students came through in other ways, including cell phone interruptions (because their calls were more important), side conversations, and nit-picking.  They didn’t understand that you can have a 25- or 35-year-old teacher and a 65-year-old neophyte and that “kid” should be revered for his knowledge and experience he’s willing to share.

#12.  Don’t steal. That may sound like a no-brainer, but my God can be a vengeful God and so can I. I will send my flying monkeys after you.

In developing my current circle, I went through a period of allowing strangers into my home in small groups, sometimes based on referrals and sometimes after having a sweet tea with them at a cafe to make sure they weren’t crazy witch-hunter preachers in disguise.  Sometimes, I just took a chance because my intuition told me to.  For the most part, this worked out very well, and the first 3 people to come to my home have been core members of the group for years.   Here in the Bible Belt, it’s sometimes hard to make connections with other pagans until you know a few people and have their trust.  When we became a closed group, we began relying more on referrals from current members so that new people would have the right energy to mesh with ours. That’s a popular complaint I hear from people who really want to be a part of a group but don’t have an “in,” but there’s usually a good reason a group becomes a closed group.

Just before I closed our group officially, two probationary members (yes, sign language fans from Part 1)  brought an acquaintance who was a bit older than I am and didn’t clear it with me first. My alarm bells went off when she walked in.  Something didn’t feel right.  During the dinner I provided and social time, the tag-along refused to tell the rest of the group about her path or anything about her other than a first name.  Since my group shares deeply, this was another red flag. When one person clams up, others don’t want to share.  During the workshop, she went into the bathroom where she was heard rummaging through a cabinet.  After she left and the probationary members left, my daughter discovered that several personal items were missing that she had stashed in the cabinet before dinner.

Okay, I got the message–time to restructure into something better.  Perhaps nothing else would have made me close my circle but this.

#12. Keep an open mind. Don’t nitpick and fault-find how the workshop or ritual is done.  Especially if you are not paying for it. Almost every circle leader and teacher I know has some story about a member or guest muttering under their breath–or worse, loudly arguing with the leader or teacher–that THAT isn’t how he or she does it or was taught.  My writing partners and I covered some of this in Celebrating the Tower Card:  Third Degree Challenges, Shielding, Witch Wars, and Cult Detection where two new Third Degrees slammed other Third Degrees for not using the exact Quarter Call wording from a certain page of their lessons.  Everyone has a different way of getting to the same place, I believe. Some paths are more structured than others.  I myself cannot easily stay within a particular structure and I’m forever finding new things that amp up my spiritual life and abilities even more.    So listen up and even if you don’t want to try something new in your own practice, try to gain an appreciation for the differences and similarities in other paths.

If a workshop is worth attending, then it’s worth listening to respectfully…or quietly leave so others can. Don’t interrupt to tell the teacher she’s all wrong or that you don’t like the topic. I do regret that I didn’t tell my last guest to do this in a workshop to leave immediately.  I had put together a ritual-writing workshop and one of our newer members had asked to bring a guest whom he believed would be a nice fit because she’d been to many, many different groups like ours. (That should have been a hint.)  The topic was pre-announced, with plans to do 1 or 2 rituals near the end.  Less than 2 minutes into the workshop, she began asking questions that were really just demands for why I was wasting her time when she didn’t believe in rituals.  After that, nothing could be said without an interruption from both her and the new member who suddenly had decided he didn’t like rituals after all. My bad.  I should have said, “I’m sorry, but this workshop obviously isn’t for you.  Thanks for joining us for dinner and have a good night.”  But I was trying to be a good hostess and wrongly put one persnickety guest’s whining ahead of my tried and true students.  When she left with  her sponsor, the rest of the group stayed for several hours, way past my bedtime, to get the info they’d come for. Which brings me to….

I am a student of my own experiences. So are you.

Part of dealing with the “contrast” of disruptive attendees is that we figure out what we do want in a group or circle and what we won’t put up with.  In discussing this subject with other circle leaders, what I heard again and again was that the disruptive person who was called out on behavior once was eventually asked to leave, sometimes after great detriment to the group.

Not just us pagans:

Over a decade ago, a Wiccan High Priest from New York–with a fairly large pagan church under his guidance–showed me a book about dealing with the dynamics of personalities within a church.  It was intended for Christian pastors. He explained that even though the spiritual groups were Christian in the book, he had encountered the same issues among pagans, and that the book had been very helpful in dealing with the “people issues” of being a spiritual leader and teacher.  I remember being amused at the time. I’d grown up Southern Baptist and had seen all manner of hypocrisy and disrespect in my hometown church.  In fact, it was that kind of mistreatment of others that drove me away from the Christian church.  At the time the High Priest told me this, I’d been a solitary for years and hadn’t dealt with many pagan groups, either online or offline.  There was still a part of me that thought my new religion was somehow less tarnished that the Southern Baptist antics I’d so often seen.  As he tried to tell me, people are people, regardless of their spiritual path, and some will be prone to drama and misbehavior, regardless of the tenets of their religion.

In summary, I’d like to point out that my current circle, a closed group with occasional open events, has not had any of these annoying behaviors  from our core group.  But it did take a while to fine-tune the membership until we had just the right people.  We do try to bring in new members occasionally, at least on a trial basis.  I’ve led 4 different groups (from my home) over the last decade and been involved with 3 or 4 others as an occasional participant.  The other groups I’ve led, the ones with the problem children, did not last longer than 6 months because of the kinds of problems I describe here.

What it’s all about, that common denominator in these WTF instances I’m describing, is respect or lack thereof.   My current circle’s membership has genuine love and respect for each other, and that has made us a family.  But it’s more than just respect for me as the group’s leader or teacher. It’s respect for other students, respect for yourself so that you get the most of out of the precious knowledge made available to you, and respect for your Gods.

The lack of respect I’ve seen isn’t limited to one particular age group, by the way.  In my own experiences, it is often the parents rather than the teens who act out but that may just be my own dynamic.  I have never had one second’s worth of disrespect from any participant under 22, perhaps because they are so eager to learn and soak up anything I can show them.   That’s the best kind of student, in my opinion:  enthusiastic, mentally engaged,  open-minded, and committed to learning more–through reading, listening, participating with us, and experimenting on their own.

As for the others, I have this fantasy that they are one day right smack dab in the middle of an exorcism and wish they’d been paying attention….

If you know the photographer of the beautful picture to the left, please let me know so I can give credit.  I have seen similar but have not found one exactly like this one that has been credited.  This is the Glory Window at Thanks-Giving Square in Dallas, symbolizing the Divine reaching down, or so I’m told.  The stained glass is the creation of artist Gabriel Loire. 

If you’ve missed my previous writings on “metaphysical houses,” I’ll repeat a little bit for you from one of my books about my meditation experiences to give you an idea of what these are.  They are part meditation, part lucid dreaming, always accidental, and always insightful. If I ever wonder about what’s really going on with someone, an invitation into their ”metaphysical house” will show me. 

Background:

Over the past couple of years, I’ve noted that my meditations include “metaphysical houses,” which are representative “structures” of the inner workings of a person, community, partnership, or situation. I didn’t set out to visit such places but rather, I just landed there and explored the territory, often without the owner being present or available at that moment.

I’ve wandered through my ex’s 3-story mansion with the heavy furniture and picture-perfect rooms but with a huge secret house of cubby holes in the back, mostly occupied by his mother but opening out onto a back patio of pleasant snapshot-posters of the girls and me many, many years ago. My ex was never present on those visits but the girls and his mom were.

Once I was invited into a dark, damp, dangerous place filled with basement rooms and spiraling staircases that seemed to devour anyone who stepped inside more than a few feet. I’ve stayed far away from her “house” since then and from the cruel little girl with dead eyes.

I’ve landed a few times at a cozy house on a cul-de-sac with a stream nearby and been told that the place belonged to The Treat. I’ve wandered through and talked with his mom (mothers seem to occupy the back rooms of so many of these metaphysical houses!) and smiled over his eclectic mix of pop culture furniture and ancient artifacts, all in a cozy home that was behind a busy office and reception area in the front of his home. Sometimes he wasn’t home and other times he was in his office and too busy to notice the steady trail of visitors—sometimes by the bus load. But he did reciprocate by visiting my own “house” more than once.

I’ve discovered that my own “metaphysical house” is based on the house I grew up in but it encompasses a huge portion of the family farm. So a “metaphysical house” is more than just a building. So many of my own memories reside there, as well as people I knew from long ago who have passed over.

So that’s the background for these…excursions.  I assume I would be blocked somehow if I were not allowed in as sometimes I’ve found that I could go no farther into a house, even after a direct invitation from someone to try it sometime, or that the rooms were dark or somehow “off-limits.”  I have never once begun a meditation with the intention of exploring a “metaphysical house” of someone or trespassing (another word, I suppose, for psychic spying).  There is almost always some  form of invitation, though with a few, I have gone deeper than the invitation issuer realized I could. Deeper than I realized, too.  There is usually some close bond with the person. These excursions do not happen with people with a lot to hide from me or with strangers or adversaries.    They are a deep form of bonding and understanding, a sort of letting down walls and letting me in.

I have not had one of these odd types of meditations in over 3 years. The last time–before this week–was a former boyfriend.  I experienced his metaphysical house as a tiny cottage of no more than 600 square feet, run-down.  There was no one inside.  A few people wandering around outside.  Some of the shrubbery outside was overgrown, though the grass was trimmed a bit.  It was a startling revelation for me.  The energy of the place was one of impoverishment.  That was probably the best clue to what was going on in his heart when we split up.  He did not have a sense of abundance and resented those who did.   I visited his inner realm several times and it was always the same.  I didn’t want to understand it at the time, but I always felt a sense of sadness as I walked barefoot around the house he called his heart.

After that, I dated another man for a year and never once had a dream about him, let alone any deep meditative experience.  Now I realize that that made sense, as he had much to hide–both illegal and unetchical–and worked damned hard at keeping those shields up around me so that I wouldn’t find out the truth of who he really was.    My experiences with him and my lack of lucid dreaming about him lead me to believe that being allowed into a metaphysical house is certainly the equivalent of being “allowed in” on an emotional and spiritual level.  There was never an emotional bond between us.  I wonder what I would have seen if I had been invited in….

After three years, I thought I’d lost the talent for these things.  Not so.

Last weekend, I had a lucid dream about someone I thought I knew well, and the insights floored me.  In fact, I thought there was very little I did not know, but I was astonished. He was not inside the house itself but in a vast softball field, playing with family members, teens, people in the community.  His metaphysical house reminded me of my own–much larger than a house and including surrounding woods, pastures, ponds, and natural areas.  Lots of green and Nature. 

Inside the house were a few pieces of art I’d seen before.  Or at least, whatever it was they represented, I’d seen before.  They were exquisite, prominently displayed in his house, particularly in the outer rooms and kitchen/living room/social areas.  It’s hard to explain what these pieces of art looked like to me–some were like big carved spirals of colored glass and gemstones, some mixed with wood or metal.  Outside of these dreams, I have never seen anything like this but the photo above reminded me by feeble comparison.

I was struck by how full the house was.  People were ambling around. Some were family members.  Others were colleagues and friends.  I understood.  This is how my own metaphysical house looks–populated by people I care about and by people I have obligations to.  Not necessarily people of my heart or people on my mind but people I have a bond with, like it or not (which explains some relatives who have taken up residence in my inner realms!).   These were all people he takes care of in some way. 

Okay, really, no surprises so far.  Extreme interest, yes, because it was such a perfect reflection of this dear friend. 

Then someone there in the house– an angel or spirit guide or…Jesus?–asked if I’d seen the inner rooms.  A rhetorical question.  He immediately pointed out that I hadn’t and led me into the core of the house.  These rooms were generally not populated at all, even though they had been arranged for many to lounge comfortably and socialize.  The ceilings were plastered domes ending in the stone floor, but they were covered in the most equisite pieces of art. Colored glass, spirals, circles, mosaics, gemstones, different textures and material fuzed together and encrusted in the plast of the walls and ceilings.  They were bright and fantastical, such that no human eye has seen anything so magnificant.  Each of these was a treasure, but hidden away.  Willing to be shared, but the rooms housing these precious galleries were empty of all the people wandering through the rest of the house.  It made me wonder why they didn’t take a few steps out of the way to explore these treasure troves.  It was as if they weren’t interested in what was beyond the kitchen table.

Most of what I saw on this excursion matched what I know of this person.  What surprised me was just how many unknown treasures are deeper inside, untapped, hidden away except for those who would seek them out.  And that…that bears remembering.

So the gift is back.  Whether I like it or not.  This time, I liked it a lot.

I can’t believe I actually have to tell people how to behave.  Really?  I mean, really????

While I am very much a live-and-let-live kind of person and I don’t believe that there’s only one way to do most anything, certain behaviors bother the hell out of me and will get you banned from any circle, ritual, or workshop I lead, and possibly barred from attending secular social occasions I host.  That may sound harsh, and if it does, well, our energy isn’t going to mesh well in a ritual so best if we just end it there.

By behaving, I mean basic etiquette, not whether or not you choose to get naked in circle or get a little carried away jumping over Beltane fertility fires at a festival.  Yeah, yeah, we’ve all been there.  Let’s see if you can spot the common denominator  in Lorna’s Rules for Behaving Yourself in Circle, other than “Wow, Lorna’s really bitchy tonight.”

Lorna’s Rules for Behaving Yourself in Circle:

1.  If you’re having a horrible day and pissed at the world, stay home. I’m sorry you’re having a hard time, but that turbulent energy doesn’t belong in my circle, unless I’ve specifically said, “Hey, I know everyone is having a rough week, so come on over and we’re going to get rid of it together,” and then I do one of my well-loved “handwashing” rituals and we all  lift and clear that energy together.

Have you ever been in circle with everyone and one person is in a foul mood that brings down the rest of the group?  If you’re not empathic or aren’t strongly aware of energy, you may notice or be mildly annoyed, but it won’t necessarily ruin your experience in circle.  For those who feel energy keenly, it’s discordant…jagged…in circle and it becomes a drain on the group energy.

I made my first choice of this sort about 10 years ago as a would-be participant.  I’d been looking forward to a Winter Solstice ritual to manifest my intentions for the next year and was sooo excited.  When I arrived home after work, a letter in the mail informed me that I’d just lost the promotion I’d been working toward for the last two years.  I was devastated and angry, and even though I still wanted to go to the ritual, I knew that my horrid mood would disturb the flow of energy for everyone else.  All I could focus on right then was my loss and my anger, so instead I spent time in a private ritual of my own, grieving my promotion and releasing the anger until my energy ran clear.  If I’d gone to the group ritual, I would have spent my time sulking or complaining rather than working through the issues.  Worse, in that kind of bad mood, it was entirely the wrong kind of energy to manifest my wonderful intentions for the year, and I didn’t need to attach negativity to my lofty goals.  Much better to wait a little bit and lift up those intentions with pure, positive energy and love.

2.  Arrive on time. Yes, we all know the joke about rituals starting on Pagan Standard Time.  We also know that it’s no joke.  The ritual scheduled to start at 7 PM (that you beg off work early to get to on time) may easily start at 9 PM or later.  However, if there is ONE thing I’m very structured about, it’s my time and not wasting it.  If we are all waiting for you to show up and can’t start without you, you are stealing that time from us.  There are many other things we could be doing than waiting for you to roll in whenever you feel like it.

If you can’t arrive on time–and things do happen–let your circle leader know.   Depending on the group’s size and purpose, it may be possible to switch ritual or workshop time with social time or to accomodate you somehow.  Maybe, maybe not.    I usually structure my Gatherings so that we have some social time up front, then dinner, then workshop/ritual, then time for questions, chat, or readings.  Because a few people have trouble with leaving work on time, I never start a workshop or ritual until after 7PM, but I have to be up at the crack of dawn for work the next morning so we stick to a schedule as much as possible.  If you miss the meal, then you can help yourself later.

3.  If you’re not there when the circle is cast, don’t try to force yourself into the ritual. Or, if you arrive late for a workshop, quietly take your seat  and don’t make the speaker start all over with questions or interruptions.

If you can’t make it or something prevents you from being in circle with me, that’s okay.  I have a philosophy about it that I’ve written about before in my article,  No-Shows: Applying a Spiritual Lesson to Personal Relationships.

Back in 2000, Maggie Shayne, Evelyn Vaughn, and I led an Open Circle in Washington DC at the Romance Writers of America National Conference.  It was very well-attended, but one of the women who’d really wanted to participate had a minor mishap on her way to the Circle.  A sprained ankle or something of that sort.  She had to sit out the event and watch from a distance.   It was at that point that Maggie passed along something to me that I’d heard for the first time but was reiterated to me in my own spiritual practice over the next few years:

Don’t be upset if someone isn’t able to attend a ritual, service, or group event.  You may not know the reason, but they aren’t meant to be there at that particular time.

I have been astonished, however, by people showing up 30 minutes into a ritual and demanding the leader let them in.  I recently spoke to a very sweet-hearted priestess who, against her better judgment, allowed a late-comer who completely broke apart the energy of the circle by disrupting and then dominating the ritual with her attitude.  Normally the priestess would not have allowed the late-comer in, but she was trying to be  accommodating  and a good hostess and she caused herself a lot of unnecessary strain.

4. Your cell phone does not belong in circle. I can’t believe I have to include this!

I don’t mind discreet texting in a workshop I’m leading but please put the phone on vibrate and leave the room to take a call.  Or am I supposed to stop my workshop and everyone wait for you to chat 10 minutes?  Then again, we have put 7 phones in the middle of a workshop so we can talk about the Ghost Radar app but  it was related to the discussion itself and we all had fun with it as a group.  (See? I’m not totally a stick in the mud!”)

As for rituals, leave the phone in the house, in another room, or on silent but outside and away from the actual circle.   I do not care that your clingy girlfriend needs to hear from you every 15 minutes or  she thinks you’re cheating on her–stop texting and sexting and pay attention to ritual or sit it out.  I’m understanding that you’re waiting to hear from sick relatives,  and I encourage you to have an appointed time to check in with them….as long as you’re not answering their call in the middle of Quarter Call.

Ritual is your time to give your full attention to the Gods…and I don’t want to see a Facebook post that says, “Awesome!  We’re now washing away our old wounds and Buttercup is crying her eyes out over an ex-boyfriend she thought she was over!”

5.  Do not carry on full-length conversations via sign language during a ritual or even a workshop.  OMG.  I could not make this stuff up.

Before my current spiritual circle became a closed or private group–and part of the reason we decided to close it and focus on serious students–I had a couple of women in their 20’s attend several workshops and rituals in my home.  In the middle of the first workshop, with all of us seated in a circle, one of them began making wild hand gestures about 5 feet to my left.  Then the other, about 5 feet to my right, answered her with a flurry of hand motions while I was focusing on giving precise instructions.  I completely lost my train of thought and stopped my workshop, to which one said, “Oh, go ahead.”  When I asked them to please stop distracting both their teacher and fellow students, they didn’t understand the problem.  After all, it wasn’t like they were being LOUD.  And then they continued, after being asked to stop, to hold sign language discussions during the workshops and rituals.  They are, to this day, on my banned list.

Please come back for Part 2 of this article next Friday.  Until then, behave yourself!

(By the way, my current private circle?  The group was fine-tuned until we have had none on these problems in several years.)

In WAITING ON THE THUNDER, available for your kindle or kindle app, I explored the themes of faith, whether it’s faith in yourself, which the hero has lost, or faith in God, which is what’s happened with Megan.  Having been a good church girl all her life, she left her hometown after her husband and best friend betrayed her, and she’s been licking her wounds ever since. 

So what happens when you pray and the answer isn’t yes?  What happens when you ask but don’t receive?  Sometimes, the answer isn’t no, but  it’s just not the right time to receive what you asked for.

This novel really embodies that theme for me. 

In the early 1990’s, I read about a Southern judge who, known for his “creative punishments,” sentenced a man convicted of sexual assault to live in a community known for its unappealing women.  As with many things that touch my life, that story sparked an idea for a novel.

I originally wrote the novel for an editor at a major New York publishing house, but when she left for a new assignment, the manuscript was lost in the shuffle and—disappointingly—was never published.   For years, it’s been sitting on an old hard drive because it was considered too religious or too spiritual for the market I wrote it for.  But in cleaning off an old computer before donating it, I re-discovered the fully-edited-and-ready-to-publish book, with instructions to remove the Christian references.

If this book had been published on schedule, many of the spiritual elements would have been edited out of the final version.  The time wasn’t right for it then.  But I do believe it is now.

Waiting on the Thunder is Christian-themed without being preachy, and contains elements of violence,  death, sexuality outside marriage, and the usual high body count found in my suspense novels.

Leaves change late here in Florida.  Photo copyright by Lorna Tedder.

A few days ago, in spite of everything in my life being absolutely fantastic, I hit a couple of days of unexpected emotional turmoil.  There was just no way to explain it and I couldn’t shake it for a day or two. 

As usual, I like to experiment and explore the scientific side of things when I can.  My relationship with a particular friend has turned me into a “data whore” in this regard as we log a number of daily stats as part of our health regimen and goals.  It is through this collection of data over the last year or so that I have been able to uncover my exact food sensitivities and lost approximately 30 pounds in a matter of months (more on that in my upcoming 20 Pounds in 30 Days: A Food Rebel’s Best Way to Lose Weight).

It’s also because of that extensive data collection that I have records of unexplained mood swings.  I’ve noticed that I’m most likely to have an unexpected change in feelings (emotions) when I have a  Moon Conjunt Vertex transit.  This is the transiting moon conjunct my natal vertex.   Of course, that happens about once a month.  It’s vital for me when I have such influences (astrological weather) that I don’t make any impatient decisions or send any scathing break-up letters.  I’ll certainly regret it in a couple of days when my emotions (Moon) are past that turning point (Vertex). 

As I’ve discussed in other articles on the Vertex, Moon-Vertex conjunctions are very powerful in regard to emotions, whether it’s a Moon transit every month or  a conjunction in your progressed chart.  The monthly transits tend to be more like “hiccups’ in my emotional structure, whereas in the progressed chart, they are more like earthquakes that change my feelings drastically, making me very aware of something or someone and often portending either falling head over heels in love or a heartbreak.  On a few occasions, my feelings for someone or something have just…made a 180-degree turn, sort of like a light switch suddenly turned off or on. 

So check your current transits and your progressed charts (and your solar return chart) at astro.com and see what your astrological weather looks like–and where that Moon and Vertex are.

(My novella, A Reverence for Trees, is currently available in the Kindle Lending Library on Amazon.)

For readers of The Spiritual Eclectic, here’s a freebie on January 13-14 — a pagan love story.

For as much magick as we work and work hard at, too, sometimes the hardest part is just letting go and “allowing” things to come to us in a better way than we could ever imagine or just letting Deity act as our Universal Manager without our being so stirred up with anxiety.

Last week, everything was turned upside down for me when I found out a supposedly spiritual person–a fellow pagan who professed to a creed of harm none–was stealing from me.  Openly.  Admittedly.  I give a lot away in my time, resources, and money, but when someone steals from me, that act strikes a chord that is cacophonous and bitter and makes me want to close down and not be quite so giving…at least not of good things.

To further my embitterment over the theft, she rationalized it away as doing it for the poor, or for poor people in “the South,” and she’d generously (her word, not mine) said nice things about me while taking money out of my pocket.  All I could think was, I was raised in South Georgia, a good 20+ hour drive south of her in the tightest notch of the Bible Belt, and though we didn’t have much when I was growing up and I’ve always worked for every last thing I have, I never ever stole.  If I didn’t have the money, I did without.  That excuse for stealing won’t fly with me…or as they say back home (about 100 miles from where I live now), “That dog won’t hunt no more.”

Needless to say, I was upset.  I was very close to posting a map to her house and her philosophy that it’s okay to steal if you have a reason.  My blood pressure was up for a couple of days and then, suddenly, I just turned it over to Deity to take care of for me, as sure as if God, or Goddess, or perhaps Archangel Michael–whom I work with quite a bit–had said, “Stop fretting about it, Lorna, because I’ll take care of it.”

I guess that would be akin to something I was frequently told in my Southern Baptist childhood:  “Vengeance is mine,” sayeth the Lord.  That takes on a whole  ‘nother level of meaning when you’re a priestess of The Morrigan.

So without a whopper of a zap-you-back-bitch spell or prayers for her destruction enlightenment, I turned it all over to Deity, letting go and letting God take care of it, without any further worry on my part.  Within minutes, a calm came over me.  Just a deep serenity and knowing that it was “taken care of.” A few hours later, yes, I found out it had been.

That’s not the first time that’s happened, that letting go followed by a sudden sweet serenity, peace.  Allowing is one of those harder things for me to remember because I first have to recall that I CAN find calm again and how I do it every time, and then get into the right headspace to let go.  For most of my breaths and heartbeats, I am calm, happy, creative, and very productive.  But not always.

It’s hardest for me to maintain that serenity–or remember to “allow” when turbulence occurs–when I feel ill or weak or heart-wounded.  It’s become so easy for me to manifest when I can “just allow”  my needs and desires to be taken care of.  There’s no resistance in my energy to letting go and letting my Gods deliver my heart’s desire in little things and even bigger things that have been yearned for for years but finally have come when I’ve let go.  I look back at what’s been delivered in the these last 18 months and I find myself giddy with disbelief. It’s come so easily after so long of struggling!

It’s harder sometimes with the things that are closest to the heart, in allowing them to come, in letting go and no longer resisting with our fretting or worrying over them.  It is often in those places where we feel the weakest, whether through physical sickness or insecurity or fear over possible loss at a wrong step.  Those fears wrap around our desires and we hold onto them, more tightly than the little things or the less important things.  Our desires are weighted down and can’t fly freely.  Being sick or in a grief state reinforces those feelings of fear and weakness, makes it harder to break through and turn them over to Deity to handle for us.

It would seem, wouldn’t it, that when we’re weakest, we’d be quicker to turn over our weighty fears and problems–wouldn’t it?!–instead of hanging onto them?

Sometimes we need reminders.  For me, that’s a simple little ring I have that says ALLOW MIRACLES.  I gave it to my daughter when her heart was broken, and later when my heart was broken, she gave it back to me.  Those heartbreaks were, in hindsight, miracles that set us free to be loved by far kinder men who enhanced our lives rather than drained.  Whenever I am shaken by turbulence, I chase down that little ring and wear it a day or two or until I can find my calm again and allow…because when that calm comes, I know that in spite of the current queasiness, there is a far better outcome on its way to me, and all is being taken care of without–especially without–my worrying about it.

Do you see this photo of the path through the woods?  I cannot see where this path ends.  As with Life, I can see only a few steps ahead.  In places where the path is straighter, I can see farther, but what’s around that next bend?  Or just over the hill?

To me, it’s unknown.  And I’m a person who likes to know. 

I occasionally have visions of the future–photographic flashes, if you will, sometimes  accompanied by sounds, smells, and–most distinctly–emotions.  I have met strangers whom I remembered from the future as extremely important to me, complete with all the feelings that flank a deep love relationship.   And I have had strong intuition about certain things around that next bend, both joyful and painful.  But I still don’t know what’s around the bend.

And I still want to know.

Somehow, I feel that I’m more in control of my destiny if I know.  If the flashes aren’t there or the strong intuition or the very serene sense of “knowing” and I still desperately want to know, I will attempt to divine for it.  It’s my way of reaching out into the future, raising a periscope high above the forest so I can turn the looking glass this way and that, and see where the path leads.

It’s been pointed out to me by past spiritual teachers that my persistent need to know is a sign of a lack of faith.  Having faith in the Universe and that I will be taken care of is one of my life lessons, and one I have not yet mastered…but I am working on it.

Two months ago, I began an exercise that was meant to be artistic and turned out to be very spiritual for me.  During this exercise, I discovered that art is an act of faith.  Although I had been a writer all my life, I had never until two months ago participated in National Novel Writing Month.  This year was different–I had room in my life to give it a try and see if I could actually write a whole 50,000 words in 30 days.  And I had a story worth telling–the story of a woman trying to find her purpose in life and a man who would do anything for love.  Two tortured, not always nice characters discovering their dark places alone and together and in the process helping me work through some of my own dark places, as often happens when I pick up a pen or sit down at my keyboard.

Although I had wanted to try NaNo before, I had always had a career, busy home life, kids.  This year, I had an empty nest, a short break in my relationship, and not so much overtime to work in the office.  So I decided to pour my passions into writing as fast and furiously as possible for the entire month of November.  I finished the month with 50,105 words and the next month with another 35,000 words.  Another 15,000 words or so and I’ll proudly be done with THE SECRET LIVES OF LIBRARIANS, the first of the 9th Gate Book series.

While the creative aspect has been a blast, the spiritual aspect surprised me.  The other thing I did completely differently from any writing I’ve done before–instead of sitting down and writing it all out or dictating a chapter, transcribing it, reading it, and then dictating more–was doing nothing but dictating the story.  No going back to analyze and agonize over what I’d already written.   I dictated on my commute to/from work, on power walks, while folding laundry or cooking.   To my shock, I found that I’d written 500 pages entirely on my phone’s recorder app, and in record time.  Oh, the Gods were good to me!  

I was okay for the first few chapters where I could remember everything, but then it became strangely disconcerting.  (Yeah, that’s often the sign of a spiritual lesson, isn’t it?)  I began to feel ungrounded, worried.  Although the story was plainly there in my audio files, like life experience only I remembered, I didn’t have anything to look at to see exactly where I was or where I was going.  I knew I had come a long way–all I had to do was look at the transcription word counts from the audio files–but I didn’t have the actual printed pages to look back at, the manuscript dog-eared or scribbled on.  All I had was the momentum to go forward around that next bend.  I knew how the story started, how it ended, and some things that happened on the way.  But I didn’t know that Lilah had been abducted as a child and how her survivor’s guilt turned her into a self-proclaimed monster or how Daegan would understand calling on his Gods most often when he was in need or desperate or desperately in love and the correlation between prayer and romantic need.  These were things that I discovered as I moved forward on the path, both literally and figuratively.

Then one day, about 80,000 words into the story, I was out with my phone’s recorder app turned on, walking at a nice 4 mph clip, when I came upon the path in the photo.  I didn’t know where it led and I didn’t know what was around that next turn.  Specifically, what words would I be dictating?  What insights would come to me when I turned that corner?  I had just recently heard a lecture by Dr. Wayne Dyer where he talked about having faith when he sat down to write that whatever he needed to write would come in the perfect way, and that’s the way I approached this entire novel–completely on faith that whenever I pick up that recorder and head down an unknown path, whatever I need to know to write about will come to me, that the creativity and inspiration will be there, that the right words will be there and it will flow. 

That I will never turn that corner and find there’s nothing there for me but emptiness. 

Some surprises, yes.  Often.  But that I’ll be okay and the words will come. 

Art itself is like that, like Life.  It’s all an act of faith.  Whether it’s the writer not knowing what happens in the next chapter, the sculptor not knowing the resulting form, the photographer not knowing exactly what will be captured in a split second of the life of her subject, or the musician sitting down to pluck out a few chords to match his lyrics.  Or even the seamstress or quilter with a pattern in her head but still no idea which fabrics she’ll pick or how the end result will look….except beautiful. 

Writing THE SECRET LIVES OF LIBRARIANS has been like that: the faith that what I need will be there when I reach that point on the path.  Even though I have no idea how it looks now.  I don’t need to know the exact words when I put on my walking shoes and head out the door to finish these last chapters.  The words will come as I stroll the curves and twists of the path.  I don’t need to know.  It will come.

And the same in my life.  I don’t need to know exactly what’s around the next bend. 

Because it will be okay.

I have faith.

Readers would be amazed to know that neither the author nor the publisher are making “grocery money” off most of these books at those prices because they just can’t stomach raising the prices any higher. So I understand when readers talk about book exchanges, even though I as an author will never see a penny of royalty for any reads a book gets after its first sale via a bookstore or publisher website.  You know that happens.  And Gods know, there are plenty of people who want me to send them a free book “to see if I get hooked on your work.” 

Sigh.  It’s no wonder so many of my favorite authors have stopped writing when confronted with the choice of feeding their children by working at Wal-Mart or writing the books they love but don’t get paid for. There’s only so much time in a day and most of us have bills to pay.

Several online friends were talking about a book club for pagans, from the readers’ point of view, and it made perfect sense as a reader.  Then one said something that made me wonder.  They mentioned exchanging books by mail, using media rate and how it would probably be less than $3 to send a book.  Let’s say there’s another $.50 for an envelope if you can’t find a small box to recycle or have a free envelope. 

So they’re willing to spend $3 to $3.50 for a book…with most of that money going to the US Postal Service and none to the author or publisher.  Hmmmm. So here’s a—perhaps—better suggestion that’s greener because it doesn’t spend additional natural resources on transport or waste trees and if financially more favorable to authors. 

If you’re interested in continuing to see your favorite authors writing books about your favorite subjects (rather than spending their writing time waiting tables or sweeping floors) and you’re willing to spend several dollars on a book’s TRANSPORTATION to you but wouldn’t think about it for the book, then please consider spending the same amount as you would on postage by buying one of their less expensive ebooks.

For example, if you’re a Prime member at Amazon, you can go right now and borrow pagan and spiritual ebooks from their lending library to be read on your kindle—and the author will get a small royalty that sends a signal to please keep writing. 

Some examples you can read for free:

A REVERENCE FOR TREES (A PAGAN LOVE STORY)  

FLYING BY NIGHT (A PAGAN SUSPENSE)

WORKING THROUGH GRIEF

SHAYNE ON YOU (Maggie Shayne’s book that is so magickal and full of Law of Attraction!)

If you don’t have a kindle, you can download the kindle app for free and read ebooks on your computer, tablet, or smart phone. 

Examples under $5—and yes, some are ones I’ve had a hand in because it’s easier to list quickly what I know about personally. In ascending order of price:

A REVERENCE FOR TREES (A PAGAN LOVE STORY)   $.99

THE ARCHANGEL’S RETURN: ANGELS, PROTECTION RITUALS, GUIDES AND ENTITIES (an instructional story) $.99

SALT AND FIRE: CLEANSING AND HOUSE PURIFICATION RITUALS (an instructional story)  $.99

THE SWEETEST POISON:  HYPNOSIS, COVEN DYNAMICS, AND ENERGETIC CONNECTIONS BETWEEN LOVERS (an instructional novella)  $.99

ELEMENTS OF FUN: 14 NATURE BASED PROJECTS to ENJOY WITH YOUR CHILDREN  $2.99

MAGICK’LY DELICIOUS (A PAGAN COOKBOOK)  $2.99

GIFTS FOR THE GODDESS ON A COLD WINTER’S EVE  $3.50

GIFTS FOR THE GODDESS ON A WARM SPRING MORN $3.50

ACCESS: AN END TIMES THRILLER  $4.99

CELEBRATING THE TOWER CARD: THIRD DEGREE CHALLENGES, SHIELDING, WITCH WARS, AND CULT DETECTION (an instructional novel): $4.99

FLYING BY NIGHT (A PAGAN SUSPENSE)  $4.99

FIRE BURNING IN WATER: LAW OF ATTRACTION, EXAMPLES OF MISUSE AND SUCCESSES PLUS OTHER UNIVERSAL LAWS (an instructional novel):    $4.99

If you are an author with a pagan, New Age, or spiritually eclectic book on Amazon or at another ebook site and it’s price is roughly the same as POSTAGE via media mail, please use the comment section below to list it.  Tell us where we’ll find it and let us and our readers support your work! 

Be careful what you wish for, especially in how you frame your desire with words.  Sometimes I think the Universe is sitting back, howling, slapping its all-powerful knee, and saying, “Hey, the Law of Attraction always works!  You received exactly what you asked for!”

One of the things I’d put on my list of intentions for my Burning Bowl ritual at Winter Solstice 2010 was a new dress size, one I hadn’t seen since my pre-motherhood weight of 113 pounds– a size 10. Yep, I was wearing sizes 8s and 10s when I was still light enough to walk on football players’ backs in college.  Within 30 days of setting that intention, I’d lost 20 pounds, with more to follow over the course of the year  (upcoming book on that, of course!). 

At my 2011 Burning Bowl gathering, I was comfortably in size 10’s, some even too loose to keep on my shoulders.  I’d started wearing 8’s and even a couple of size 6’s.  I decided to fine-tune my “look good naked” intention a little and said, “Okay, I want more 8’s in my closet this year.”

Well….

The brand new pair of size 8.5 heels I bought in mid-December looked like they’d be just perfect for a New Year’s dress…until I walked right out of them.  Huh?  Same thing with another pair of 8.5’s.  My squeezy-tight size 8’s, though, were a perfect fit.  Perfect.

How odd, I thought.  I’ve been wearing 8’s since I was 12 years old, and 8’s and 8.5’s since my first baby.  I have great arches and I don’t have fat feet!  Plus, I’d lost and kept off over 25 pounds for almost a year.  Why the sudden change?  (Yeah, yeah, Law of Attraction.  I know.)

After a bit of research on whether feet shrink with weight loss, I discovered that yes, they can, though usually not by more than a size. The bone structure doesn’t change but you can have fat deposits on your feet as well as on your hands and fingers.  Hmmmm.  I never would have thought, but there’s a correlation there between a specific food group I gave up entirely over the autumn and inflammation in the body.  I have had to buy new shoes for both work and athletics in the past week.  So yes, my shoe size shrank from 8.5 to a nice 8. 

To a nice 8.  Yes.  Of course.  My closet suddenly has a lot more size 8’s.

Oh, damn you, Law of Attraction.  Damn you.  I didn’t know I needed to specify Size 8 DRESSES.

No, I didn’t stop learning or exploring. 

Much of what I’ve learned has been turned into deep discussion with a soul mate and by the time we turn it every which angle, there’s nothing left for the page.  The second reason is that I’ve had a very good 2011 that included a job change, a relationship, the fledging of my youngest child, new books to write and finish, and a career promotion–and balancing all that has left me short on blogging time.

To make sure that I don’t get out of my regular habit of exploring eclectic spiritual ideas, I’ll be participating in the Pagan Blog Project every Friday throughout 2012 as part of my spiritual plan…my year in faith, starting 6 January.

Be sure to join me!

It feels like…stagnant energy has  become unstuck.  That makes sense for people as well as projects.  The impulses behind a new start or a do-over shake loose the stuck feeling.  We WANT to move forward.  We crave movement, even if we’re standing still, because if we just stand still, the world moves forward and we lag behind its movement  and so move backward.  We don’t discard the older project by breathing new life into it any more than we discard our own selves by changing up how we present ourselves and what we present to ourselves.

With this unstuck energy, I am already finding nice surprises.  A short book I wrote months ago, GIVE YOUR LIFE DIRECTION, is suddenly finding new life and receiving attention from new readers.  I suppose it could be tied to New Year’s resolutions and goals for 2012 but whatever the impuse behind the new attention, seeing it springing to life after all these months is gratifying and. well, makes me giggle a little (not a common thing!)

Here’s the original info page.  If you’ve been a long-time reader of this blog, you’ll recognize some of the chapters.

Give Your Life Direction: 23 Life Coaching Tips to Motivate You, Re-Focus Your Time, and Overcome Resistance to Positive Change

by Lorna Tedder

Published by Spilled Candy Books

From the author…

The purpose of this book is to share with you 23 different methods I used to get to that “good place” I’ve sought all my life—from committing to taking real action to change, to making time in my life for the things I want, to stopping nosy people from giving me unwanted advice, to figuring out what works for me and keeps me healthy, positive, and happy.

There was a time when I felt as if I had no control over my life’s direction because I was letting everyone and everything direct me. I used to be uptight, over-stressed, anxious, and…in physical pain…from all the expectations I placed on myself and allowed others to place on me.

When I divorced after a long-term marriage, I began to search actively for a different way to live my life—not just more productively (because I was already very productive) but with serenity and genuine enjoyment. That meant looking closely at my beliefs and behaviors. Self-knowledge is crucial to making wonderful changes in our lives, and it’s not always easy. The more burdens we carry, the harder to let go of them. The more shadows in our past, the more frightening it can be to shine the light on them because we’re not always sure there’ll be anything of substance left by the time the shadows are all gone.

Slowly, I began to peel off the layers, to let up on myself instead of badgering myself to be better to an impossible degree of never good enough. I started to let go of the way I’d learned to look at things and accept that there were other, easier, more fulfilling ways to look at life. Then I started to let loose, just be myself and insist on it without being my own worst enemy.

If you can use any one of the methods in this book to lighten your own load, then you can take those important first steps to a more enjoyable life path. In only a few steps, you’ll start to figure out your life’s direction and how to make course corrections so you can find solid footing as wonderful new vistas begin to unfold in front of you.

I wish you beautiful changes,

Lorna Tedder

Author of The Long-Awaited, Honest-to-God Secret to Being Happy (and 23 more tips for living your joy)

*******

Download the ebook  from Amazon Kindle now.

How My Burning Bowl Ritual Began

Years ago, I made New Year’s resolutions.  Usually the same ones, every year:  lose weight, stop biting my nails, whatever.   And after the first month (weeks, days, hours….) of trying really hard, I’d find I’d already failed at my resolution.  Yet every year, I made them, even though I was pretty sure when I wrote them down that they’d never happen.  Some of my friends and I even joked that all New Year’s resolutions failed.  But New Year’s Day was a good time to overturn past bad habits and start fresh.  I like fresh starts–I think most people do–and New Year’s Day is generally the biggest fresh start on the calendar.  So I wanted fresh starts.  I wanted to change things up.  I wanted life to be BETTER.

But year after year, I made my resolutions on New Year’s Eve and started fresh the next day and…failed within the month.  The longest any resolution ever lasted was until Valentine’s Day.   I really never had faith in my resolutions or in myself.

Resolutions Are Still Resolutions

Around 2004, fresh out of a 2-decade relationship–one hell of a fresh start–I turned down invitations to parties where too many people wanted to give me relationship advice, and chose to spend the evening alone, quietly, and contemplate the new year in the presence of a backyard fire pit.  It was a quiet night for me, just sitting by a fire and writing down all the things I wanted to say goodbye to and throwing little pieces of paper into the fire.  Then I wrote down the things I wanted in my life, and I threw more pieces of paper into the fire.  These were my resolutions, but in two piles:  what I didn’t want and what I did.  Not a lot of difference in previous years, but more contemplation and more of a personal ritual.  Several of the things on my list actually happened, though some were far into the next year.

Honoring the Past, Inviting the Future

The next year evolved somewhat.  A writer-friend of mine referenced a fire pit ritual as a “burning bowl,” and I loved that.  I also decided to “honor” the things I was saying goodbye to and “invite” in the things I wanted.  No more resolutions.  That word alone had so much consternation in it, such blunt force rather than smooth-flowing allowing.  That year, in anticipation of 2006, I honored my past and invited my future. 

The idea of “honoring” bad stuff in the past was hard to swallow, even though one of my spiritual teachers spoke often of it.  To me, to honor things that had hurt me meant somehow saying those things were good or even “okay.”  Yet, through this process, I came to understand that even the bad things had shaped me into who I was or had made me understand better what I really wanted out of life, and so I could honor the results of that experience.

Taking Action

I made another change that year in my New Year’s resolutions.  I decided to add an action word for the coming ear and a theme for the coming year.  For 2006, it was Manifest and Risk Everything.  I chose those words because of the things that had happened in the previous year.  Funny thing–that was the year I truly came to understand intention and manifestion, and began to let go and just let wonderful things come into my life.   By the end of the year, some of the really important things on my list had happened.  Some were hard, like ending long-term friendships with people I had allowed to make too many decisions in my life.  They were relationships that had fulfilled their purpose long ago but I’d held onto them until they I sometimes didn’t want to be around those friends because so often with them, I felt bad about myself and my life.  It hurt tremendously when those friendships ended but I was living their lives, not mine.

When that year ended and I looked back at my action word and theme, I realized that, while I had certainly not been there when I’d stated them to the stars alone on that New Year’s Eve, I was definitely THERE a year later. 

Welcoming Change

The biggest difference in the next year’s ritual was that I changed from “inviting” in wonderful changes I wanted to “welcoming” in those changes.  Can you feel the difference in choice of words?  You can invite and it not come, but if you welcome it, it’s there! I also stop referring to them as resolutions and changed the mindset to “intentions.”  I was firmly a student of the Law of Attraction at this point and had a much better understanding of it. 

Changing Times

In 2008, I made the biggest change and the most successful in terms of seeing my intentions manifest in flesh and blood.  That was the year that almost everything I stated I wanted/welcomed/expected did indeed come to me.  My new spiritual circle had been going strong for 9 months and I decided to invite everyone over for a Winter Solstice ritual, on the first day of the Winter Solstice.  This way, we could support each other in our intentions and boost off of that group energy when setting our intentions for the next year and honoring some of the harder stuff of the previous year.  Because I’m a big fan of astrology and celestial cycles, I also decided to do it in the first degree of Capricorn (Winter Solstice), symbolic of setting goals that will become solid.  Of course,  a New Year’s Burning Bowl ritual doesn’t have to be done then, but it works best for me and so that why I do it then.

As I wrote in a previous article:

The timing of the Burning Bowl ritual is important to me.  I prefer to do it on the day of the Winter Solstice because of the symbolism.  Not only is this the longest night of the year, but it’s the day many cultures and religions celebrate the “Return of the Light,” as the days begin to lengthen after this night.  It’s also the first degree of Capricorn, an astrological symbol of manifestation–and the beginning of the new year of manifestation–whether you call those intentions or resolutions. 

The Actual Ritual

Since Winter Solstice 2008, I’ve been doing the same ritual with friends, developing our resolutions/intentions, creating action words and themes for the coming year, and celebrating and supporting each other.  I serve a “feast” of roasted chicken and beef, and lots of vegetables and fruits, prepared as simply as possible so that they are are close to nature as possible.   We begin the feast with a “never hunger/never thirst” blessing and a passing and breaking of bread (those of us who are gluten-free partake symbolically and then give the bread to the birds the next day).

Here’s a reiteration of a previous article on the process and what makes my resolution parties so special:

For this year’s Burning Bowl ritual, once our feast was complete, I handed out sheets of paper to each guest and asked them to draw a big T on the paper. This was their personal list to take home, so they can put away their list and review it later in the year.   On the left column, they were to write down the things they want to honor and bid farewell to in the coming year.  Saying goodbye to these things will make room for better things to come.  I gave examples from my own list for the year:

Fretting over the lack of ——– in my life

Any insecurity or jealousy over ——–

Worry about ——-

Most of my dinner guests chose things like bad health habits, obsessions over certain people, money worries, unfulfilling jobs, and long-carried emotional pain. 

Once they were done with the things they wanted to say goodbye to, I had them turn their attention to the right column and write down things that they welcomed in for the next year.  Not things they resolved to do.  Not things they “invited” in, but may not come.  Rather, things they “welcomed” in because that implies that these things are definitely coming to them and they’ll be happy to have these things in their lives.  In my experience, the majority of things in this list arrive effortlessly throughout the course of the coming year.  I gave a few examples from my own very long list for 2009, beginning on Winter Solstice 2008:

Continue and expand my social circle and spiritual circle of friends and students, with wonderful lessons coming to me and from me

More loving relationships with family, friends, and daughters

An amazing, fun, intimate, creative, and intense sex life –and for my partner to be able to keep up with me

Learning new  things and meeting new people, including things like knife-throwing, archery, and motorcycles

Business opportunities that bring me many different streams of abundantly flowing income and allow me to be mobile in my workspace and hours

My dinner guests welcomed in a huge variety of things that were very personal to each.  I thought that was funny that we tended to want to get rid of the same things that weighed us down but what we wish to come into our lives was quite diverse.  I loved some of the younger guests’ desires for good mentors, career guidance, confidence, and many of the things that my older guests didn’t consider until they heard these later.  I was amazed at the maturity of some of the youngest guests when it came to participating in this exercise.

When everyone finally had their list completed, I asked them to consider a verb for the next year and a simple phrase or mantra.  These are, in effect, my themes for the next year, and usually go hand in hand. I have to pick the exact words, and that sometimes means digging out the thesaurus to make sure each word has exactly the connotation I’m looking for.   My themes for the past few years and for the coming year? 

2006:  Manifest  and Risk Everything

2007:  Enjoy and Allow Miracles

2008:  Thrive and  Celebrate Everything

2009:  Enchant and Be Delighted

My guests began to think of their themes for the next year, some brainstorming with others to come up with the perfect word. Once they had their themes, they committed them to memory for later in the evening.  They chose words like Relax, Recalibrate, Have Fun, Be Adventurous, Succeed, Liberate Myself, Accept, Live Life to the Fullest.

For the next part of the evening, I brought out wine glass goblets that I’d bought for 50 cents each from a local pottery store.  I could have gone with plastic champagne glasses but I wanted something that my guests could take away with them.  I’d also tried to find those little rings–wine glass jewelry–that dangle from the stem, but couldn’t find them anywhere in town.  While walking through a discount store after a sushi lunch with my eldest child, I happened on an earring display and found not what I was looking for but something better.  I picked out about 10 pairs of deeply discounted gemstone and shell hoop earrings that closed the hoop with a clasp.  Each fit perfectly around the stem of a wine glass and made a nice souvenir to be imbued with the energies of the evening and taken away as a souvenir, to be worn later, attached to a car mirror or lamp pull, etc. 

Next, I handed out little inventory tags to my guests.  These were purchased at the local Office Max in the section where they sell tags and stickers for garage sales.  Each tag was about 2 inches long, with a string attached.  My guests wrote a symbol, picture, or word on the tags to represent what they wanted to say goodbye to and placed the tags in the goblet’s bowl.  These were placed inside the glass because their cups are already full of these things.

My guests then wrote symbols, pictures, and words on the tags to represent things they wanted to welcome for the coming year.  They tied these tags to the stem of the glass and let them dangle.

For the actual ritual, I’d hoped to gather in my backyard, but the below-freezing weather made it impractical, so we moved my grandmother’s aged cauldron into my open garage and started a very small fire in the cauldron, which served as our burning bowl instead of the usual barbecue fire pit in the backyard.

We formed a circle around the burning bowl, each of us holding a candle.  I lit mine and then then person’s next to me, she lit her neighbor’s on the left, and so forth until the circle was complete.  Because our guests were of varying spiritual backgrounds,  we asked the Archangels–something common to most belief systems present–to witness our intentions. 

After some brief explanations about the symbolism of the ritual, each guest tossed tags from inside their glasses into the fire, saying goodbye to the things that no longer serve them and that they wish to get rid of in the coming year.  Some called out these things proudly.  Most performed this part of the ritual silently, as was their perogative. 

Then, one by one, and in no particular order, the guests allowed me to cut the tags from the stems, leaving evidence of their desires in place around the stem, and offered the tags representing things to be welcomed in into the fire, with our intentions carried away by the smoke to come to fruition over the next year.  Some of the guests were exhuberant at this point and it was so much fun to see them enjoying this and feeling so much lighter and more hopeful.

When all the tags were gone, I then offered each guest a choice of grape juice or champagne and filled their glasses.  We each called out our themes for the new year and toasted to them, clinking our glasses.  Then we closed our evening with thanks to the Archangels for bearing witness.

The biggest difference, I think, in this Burning Bowl ritual filled with intentions toward what we welcome in and the usual resolving to do  a host of things that will get rid of bad habits to that so many of our intentions are not things we actually have to go do (and fail at) ourselves.  These are more like a wish list to God, the Universe, Goddess, or whatever belief system you follow so that we allow Deity to bring these to us and we simply welcome them when they get here.  Since I’ve been doing these Burning Bowl rituals, about 90% of my desires are fulfilled within the first 8 months of the year–and some are ones I just never thought would have happened, and certainly not on my own. 

What Was Different this Year

Not everything went perfectly for this year’s Burning Bowl, but we didnt’ sweat the small stuff.  The stormy weather and other obligations meant some guests couldn’t make it. We had to move the ritual into the garage again because of the rain, and even my Christmas lights on the front of the house had shorted out before we began.  And yet, it was a very serene ritual with an almost giddy energy (for me) at the end.  We’d started in a wide circle, murmuring as we cast old problems into the fire and by the end, the circle had moved in very close.  There were funny moments when someone cast “stress, anxiety, and drama” into the fire and suddenly another 5 or 6 people rushed forward with “me, too!” and cast off their problems, too. 

This year, 2012, for most of my circle will be another year of big turning points.  Some have had horrendous years and are ready for that fresh start.

Signs of Personal Growth

Long after everyone had gone home (it was a weeknight), my elder daughter and I sat up and talked.  I’m glad she did because I’d been thinking I was the only one who’d had a problem earlier in the day with what to honor from the past and what to invite in.  I’d taken a long walk to ground myself and contemplate, and yet, I’d come home almost empty-handed.  You see, for all the stress and rollercoasters she and I have had in our separate lives this last year, it’s also been a phenomenal year for us both filled with lots of productivity, creativity, love, and happiness. 

My 2011 word was Bask and my theme was Enjoy Bliss!  For 2012, it’s Frolic and Stay Radiant!

Like my daughter, I’d had an awfully hard time coming up with awful things to say goodbye to.  I didn’t have an awful year of user boyfriends or drama queen stalkers (just some echoes from the past).  My list was half-hearted at best.  Sure, I could say goodbye to those last extra pounds, but I’m not unhappy with where I am now, and being down about 30 pounds since the last ritual means fine-tuning at this point.  I’m already in  the dress size I welcomed in last year, and less.  I said goodbye to bills, but that was in reference to my daughters being out of my house and on their own.  I said goodbye to rollercoasters because some of my friendships and relationships have had a lot of ups and downs, and I want that to smooth out nicely to just some exhilarating curves and none of the bottom-dropping-out-from-under spins through mid-air.  I said goodbye to something at work that I already know is going away in the big reorganization that’s coming, but it needed to be honored.  I said goodbye to a health concern that I feel will go away just as the others from last year have…the last of the bunch.  I had to stretch to find my goodbye list. Why?  Because to me, they seem like they’re already gone.

For the things I am welcoming in, those were just as difficult to name.  There is no one great big thing I want to welcome into my life in the next year that I don’t already have.  I got everything I wanted from last year, so this year, I simply asked for more of each or the next step up and forward with each. 

That’s when it hit me that yes, I had an amazing year.  I want for nothing.  I have all the things that stir my emotions and make me happy and I don’t have any of the things in my life that push me down.  The only thing I can ask for… is more of the joy.

We know this can be a tough time of you for some of you, and this is our way of trying to help others through what we’ve been through ourselves.

Just something that brings me delight:   Different metal trivets stored against the stove’s back splash brings out the metallic tile colors in the wall and appliances.

I generally don’t associate with people who are extremely judgmental, and if they judge me, I will break the friendship, cut them out of my life, or otherwise distance myself. I find that–most of the time–the people who judge others, whether by actual or perceived actions,  aren’t focusing on their own business enough. But then, hey, maybe that’s a judgment on my part.

I learned my newest and best lesson on judging from American Power Yoga 60 instructor, Kurt Johnsen. I’ve tried yoga many times before, but it’s never stuck until recently. This time, I believe that it is because of the instructor.  The APY 60 course is essentially 60 days of yoga classes, each day consisting of a 15-minute warm-up with life coaching lessons from Kurt and then a 45-minute lesson which is repeated six days, then a rest day before beginning the next lesson. Most of the life coaching and diet tips are already firmly in my regimen.

But I did discover something new when Kurt introduced the idea of wearing a bracelet band on your wrist to remind you not to judge.  The part that really caught my attention here was not the judging or not judging other people but the judging or not judging of situations.

He gave the examples of something bad happening which turned out to be a very good thing, and how life ebbed and flowed from seemingly good  situations to seemingly bad and how the exact opposite was justly likely come out of it.   He suggested not judging the situation as good or bad but that it just is, and wait and see how it plays out.

When I take these examples and look back at specific times in my life, things that seemed really bad–some of the worst things that ever happened to me in my life–turned out to be the best things because they put me in a much better road. They were life changing, yes, and at the time they seemed like they were terrible life changing things.  Later, those things opened doors to true happiness, that would never have opened otherwise.

Since being exposed to  Kurt’s advice, I have actively tried to observe myself judging events and situations, not as bad or good but as just…they are…just life…just events and situations that lead me forward on this journey.

Within the first three days after hearing this advice, I watched one situation played out, back and forth, ups and downs,  little rollercoasters causing my heart to pound and then leaving me nauseated.

In one particular situation, I received the good news of having full time help in an area where I have been doing the work alone. I was overjoyed. This is a good thing, right?

Finally I was getting the help I wanted and needed, but then I got the bad news. My new helper would not be allowed to work on certain projects with me for personal legal reasons. That was bad news, but then I found that I had another project, a huge project that could consume most of my time for the coming six months…and I could turn it over entirely to my new helper.

Great news right? I know, I know. It’s sounding like joke!

Then I found out that the new project was tied into –unbeknownst to either of us at the time–his personal legal situation so he couldn’t work on that project with me. However, that project–which was going to be so time consuming–suddenly went away.

And that was good news right? I mean, seriously, didn’t Grandpa Jones back in his HeeHaw days have a routine about this?  By this point, the good-news-bad-news shifts were plain funny.

All these up and down in a matter of few days!

I saw these same little rollercoasters going on in my romantic relationship during that time because now I was looking for events and situations that I was judging as either bad or good.  These also went from bad to good within a matter of hours and back to good again. What I learned from looking at this was not to get caught up in all those rollercoaster, hairpin-twist-turns, upside down and flung this way and that, but just to keep going forward and instead of being in a rollercoaster, just surf.  Just surf between the ups and downs, the seemingly good and seemingly bad situations. Don’t judge any of them as being bad or good, but just as being a matter of course, all moving me forward.

We’ve just released Elements of Fun on Kindle!    When we were putting this one together, what we aimed for was to incorporate the elements of air, water, earth, and fire as much as possible into the projects.  Take a look here and few the first few pages.

——

Elements of Fun:

14 Nature-Based Projects to Enjoy with your Children

by Lady Sialia

Published by Spilled Candy Books

Fourteen fun projects to do with your kids, all with Nature-based themes. Includes instructions for wind chimes, kaleidoscopes, ornaments, wreaths, sand art, crystal sculptures, and more. Perfect for parents and teachers of grade school children.

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Available for your Kindle or Kindle app.  Buy it here.

Someone last week insisted that she was going to wish people a “Merry Christmas” and not a “Happy Holiday” and that she didn’t wish them a happy holiday at all–ONLY a Merry Christmas.  Wow, that’s the Christmas spirit?  How sad.  If you don’t know what to wish people and don’t have the time or inclination to find out exactly how they celebrate this time of year, rather than pushing your own religious agenda, how about simply wishing someone a GOOD day or a  NICE day?

It’s that time of year again when the very word Christmas becomes part of a struggle for control between Christians and pretty much any other religion.  This is an article that ran five years ago this week and is as pertinent or more so today as the War on Christmas terminology escalates.  It’s too bad that some people forget their Christ’s compassion when they’re publicly  remembering the reason for their season.   It’s a time of the year when people tend to be either very happy to be with loved ones or very sad not to be–and way more stressed than is necessary.  Let’s remember to be kind to others who may not be having as merry a time as others are, particularly in the current economy, with soldiers far from home, and a lot of uncertainty about what the next year will bring.

Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree of Contrast.

You know what? I don’t really care if you wish me a “Merry Christmas,” a “Blessed Solstice,” or “Happy Holidays.” I don’t. But just wish it for me and don’t demand it of me. Such a wish, in my opinion, should be meant as a lovely personal blessing, not a political grenade.

I’m doing pretty good, I suppose. I’m still having moments  of  sadness  juxtaposed  with  relief  and  solid  attempts to enjoy the season with my children. I am open to joyful moments, and there have been more than a few sweet ones. So no one needs to avoid me or feel they can’t laugh around me. Most of my co-workers  stay out of range and let me work quietly. They don’t know what to say and they don’t want to  intrude, and this is okay. But sometimes I am unexpectedly sad and it shows. If the Law of Attraction is in effect, then I probably draw to me the  thing I’m most fearing at this moment,  which is, I really  don’t  want  to  be antagonized  or further stressed right now.

Which is why the woman behind the counter goes to great pains to insist I have a “Merry Christmas.”

I’m frowning  into  my purse,  looking  for the  credit card that’s  somewhere  in there but  my  fingers  instead find the “A Life  Remembered”  memento,  and I wince. Reflex, I suppose. I’m having an overall good day but the reminder takes me by surprise.

Just then the cashier says, in a not so pleasant way, “Smile. It’s Christmas.”

I barely hear her. I say nothing. At the moment, my throat is tight and I can’t talk.

When I look up, her eyebrows  are knitted  together and her eyes are angry. “I said, ‘Smile. It’s Christmas.’”

I don’t smile. I don’t feel like it and I’m not sure I even can right now. Instead, I just nod.

“You don’t have to be so bah-humbug about it! You don’t believe in Christmas or something? Oh.” She gets a strange look on her face as if  she just tasted something rancid.  “Was  I  supposed  to  say  ‘Happy  Holidays’  or something?” She says “Happy Holidays” in a voice that’s a perfect imitation from “The Exorcist.”

I stop what I’m doing and just stare. I shove the little memento back  into my  purse  and hand  her  my  credit card. All I can do is blink. I can’t even swallow.

“I don’t say, ‘Happy Holidays,’” she tells me. “I believe in Christ the Lord and I say ‘Merry Christmas.’  To everybody. Non-believers,  too.  Jews, too. I’m not going to be a casualty of the war on Christmas.  I’m  going to wish  everybody  who  comes  through  this  line  today  a Merry Christmas whether they like it or not. And my employer says I can.”

She takes my card and totals my bill. I’m hopeful that she’s done with her outburst, but I must be giving off my I’m-a-good-listener-and-you-can-tell-me-anything vibrations because she just  won’t shut up.

I’m breathing  deeply.  I must  look absolutely  miserable.

“Look at all these people out Christmas  shopping,” she tells me. “They’re all so happy.”

I glance at the long line of impatient people behind me. None of them are smiling either, and the woman behind me keeps sighing her displeasure. We’re all trying to finish errands  on our  lunch  hour  and  none  of us  will make it if the cashier keeps yammering.

“Everybody else in the Christmas  spirit,” she continues, finally handing me a receipt to sign. “You need to get into the mood, too. You’re spoiling it for the rest of us.” She takes  my signed  receipt  and looks  angrily  into my face. “And for God’s sake, if you’re not going to have a Merry Christmas, at least smile.”

I finally swallow and regain my composure. I respond but my voice is too low to be heard.

She completes  the business  transaction,  handing me my  receipt,  credit  card,  and  my  purchases  in  a  bag. “What? I didn’t hear you.” Her tone is unbearably hateful. My  presence  among  the  Christmas  “Merry-Makers”  is irritating to her and she is letting me know it.

I repeat myself, loud enough for her to hear, and I watch her freeze in her tracks.

“I said, I just buried my dad and I’m not really feeling like smiling right now.”

I leave without another word. I won’t shove my politics down her throat or demand she wipe the sudden look of shock and embarrassment  off her face. I could wish her a “Blessed Solstice” or a “Merry Christmas” or whatever blessing of celebration would make her happy, but that would be…disingenuous…of  me.

100 and More Ways to Feed the Body and Soul: Baby Steps to Less Stress, Better Health, and More Energy

by Lorna Tedder

Published by Spilled Candy Books

Over 100 tips for stress relief, ergonomics, desk exercises, and health in general.

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Download to your Kindle or Kindle app now.

WORKING THROUGH GRIEF is now available for your Kindle or Kindle app. This book has been available and selling well as a pdf on this site for some time now but I have been remiss in uploading it to Amazon for Kindle.  I’ve probably received more positive feedback on this one subject than on everything else I’ve ever written.

It was originally written for my best friend over a decade ago when she lost her mother, based on my own experiences with friends and family.  When Daddy died 5 years ago this weekend,  I went back and read it as a reader rather than as a writer, and it still rang true for me.  For those of you who purchase it, I sincerely hope it helps you find a better peace of mind so you can to honor what you’ve lost.

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Working through Grief: Tips for Coping with the Pain of Loss

by Lorna Tedder

Published by Spilled Candy Books

Originally written for authors who were trying to earn a living through their creativity while emotionally devastated, this short book has been updated for anyone facing the death or loss of a loved one–and trying to figure out how to keep moving forward. The book covers the definition of grief, the expected length of mourning, the unexpected emotions and reactions, dealing with “stupid” (though well-intended) comments, and many tips for coping with the pain that comes with loss.

Working through Grief has been used by support groups, grief counselors, and religious organizations to help their members and clients find some measure of peace.

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Download the ebook  from Amazon Kindle now.

When I began writing novels for Silhouette Books in the 90’s, I had posterboards with plot points and pictures.  I had composition books of the kinds of houses or cars I wanted and how I wanted to decorate my homes.

Just entertainment?  No.  And looking back, I can now see that most of my vision boards did come true.  Yes, even the hot men with earrings and turned-up collars who gave fantastic foot rubs and knew the latest in music.

For most of my life, I’ve done the kind of work that is hard to see, at least until it’s done. My dual careers have been in mental and creative fields, where the product was most often intellectual property. Sometimes it’s hard to stay on track and keep producing when you can’t see the end result for many months and there’s no evidence yet of the work that’s been done.

If I were to knit a scarf, you would be able to see the yarn and pattern before you saw the finished product.  If I were to photograph a party, you could see the digital photos in the view screen even before I transferred them to my hard drive or posted them on Facebook or printed them.  If I were pruning the shrubs outside your office, you’d see prunings on the ground.  If I were digging a ditch, you’d see a hole and dirt.  But for writers and managers, it’s harder to keep in mind what the end result should look like, so I use vision boards as guides…reminders of what is to come.

I’ve found that, when managing people, it’s helpful to sketch each person under my supervision and picture how I want to develop their talents.  Are they holding awards in their hands?  Are they smiling at their new promotions?  Are they wearing a sash that proclaims them to be the lead xyz on a particular program?   Those vision boards, I keep entirely to myself, though I occasionally share those ideas with those involved.

For my writing, vision boards are even more fun.  They’re almost always mock-ups of book covers.  I have a blast creating them, and sometimes, they give me ideas for the book.  And sometimes they won’t stop giving me ideas and turn into a whole series of books! But they do help me immensely to stay on track, and any time I wonder if I might put away the manuscript for a while, all I have to do is look at the book cover/vision board for inspiration.

Some of my  friends and family are worried about me.  They’re concerned about my relationships, one in particular. 

It’s not a bad relationship.  In fact, I consider it the sweetest, most caring relationship I have ever had with a man.  Yes, any man.  It’s also the deepest, closest relationship I have ever had in this lifetime.  With anyone.   Absolutely no one knows me better or has ever known me better.  But in general, no one in my closest circle approves, and some are very vocal.  They do not understand the nature of the relationship, and it doesn’t look like they think it should, so they fret about it openly or either give me the silent treatment on the rare occasions when I talk about this area of my life or what I want in the future.  And it hurts that they can be supportive of other people’s relationships but not of mine.   I mean, downright gung-ho about other people’s relationships, but with mine, they want to stage interventions without ever having met the person or give me  a choose-him-or-me ultimatum.   Sometimes I feel that they think other people deserve sweet relationships more than I do and that I should just be happy in my role as friend or family member and not want more out of life than I have with them.  They give lip service to being happy if I should ever choose an emotional bond with someone again, but when faced with the prospect, they don’t want me in a relationship of my own choosing.

For the most part, I don’t discuss it with my friends or family.  I learned my lesson on that in the past when a potential relationship, right after my divorce, was starting to brew and my then-friends hounded me constantly until I ended not only any chance of that relationship getting off the ground but also ended the relationships with the friends who were just too much “in my business.”   There’s a certain beauty to keeping moments of caring private, but the downside is that no one else has any idea how much support two people can give each other when times are rough and no one else is there for them…including  the  disapproving friends and family.

Like I said, it’s not a bad relationship.  There is a solid, long-term foundation of friendship and respect.  It’s the most evenly matched friendship I’ve ever had, with more in common than I could ever have believed.  I would not be in my current job position had he not talked me into getting back in the game.  I would not be writing again. I would not have regained my health.  I would be living a less fulfilled life in different circumstances, though I’d probably still be dating underwear models.  Yeah, not bad when you can point to one person as the catalyst for so many pockets of happiness.   It’s not perfect, and there are several jagged issues between us that both keep us apart and cement our deep compassion for each other.  Some of my friends like to tell me that I don’t need this relationship because they’re there for me.  And they are, to a great degree, but the times in the last year or so when I have been most distraught, it was he who was the first there for me, and often the only one there for me.  Even my most devoted (other) friends have their own lives that must be put ahead of me and not a one of them has sat with me for hours while I cried over a deep wound or a fresh anxiety.    He is there for me in the way that I have been there for them, and in a way that no one else is for me.  I have been absolutely blessed to have this particularly relationship in my life.

Now here’s the irony of  it all:  I’ve been in two really bad relationships–romantic relationships or what at least I considered romantic–since I’ve been an adult.  Three if you count one from my teen years.  My friends and family were incredibly supportive of those relationships.   Not all my friends and family, but the majority of them.  The only ones who weren’t supportive were one or two who saw things up close and personal and knew first-hand that I had to get out of those relationshps as fast as I could.  Most of my closest circle, however, were not only not supportive of my leaving truly bad relationships, but they insisted I needed to stay because I might otherwise end up alone…or they really like the guy.  Even when I explained to one that I’d rather slit my own throat than to live in it another minute in misery, I was told it was better to be with him than with no one.

My bad relationships looked the most “normal,” strangely enough.  On the outside, they were everything I was supposed to want and need and carried that social status of legitimacy with them, so they “had” to be good.  It was almost as if discovering that relationships that looked good on the outside sometimes had rotten cores was some kind of dirty secret we weren’t to admit. Just cover it up and keep living the lie, I was told.

I learned when I was 14 that perfect-looking relationships often aren’t.  ( I’m sure there are some that are wonderful, so if yours is, feel blessed to be an exception to my rule.)   As an idealistic teen, it was an awful surprise to me when one of the ideal marriages in my community ended in a very sudden divorce.  Assumptions were made about the man’s fidelity as a way of explaining it away, but I later found out–years later–that the wife had had a long string of affairs and had a history of mental illness.   The husband just kept trying to keep his family together and bore it all silently.  But the public facade was perfect.  By the time they separated legally, they hated each other’s guts but no one else had any idea.  When I divorced, I had colleagues who didn’t speak to me for a year or more because they were angry that I’d spoiled their perception of a good marriage.  They didn’t have problems with my husband so they didn’t understand how I could have problems with him.  The truth was, regardless of whose side anyone took, things happened inside our relationship that no one outside had a clue about, so it seemed perfect based on how well we fit into the mold of partnered-up happiness in a nice home with nice careers and two kids and a dog.

So no one really knows what happens in anyone else’s relationship.  It’s easy to assume based on our own viewpoints and reference points.  We want the security of believing that if a relationship looks a certain way, then their life should be perfect and so should ours.  But all relationships have bumps and joys. 

Some of my friends think I should be alone for the rest of my life because that way,  no man would ever hurt me again. They know I was hurt badly a couple of times and don’t want to see a repeat.   If I allow no one into my heart, then they can live peacefully and joyfully with the idea that I’m not going to be hurt.  But they love me and want the best for me.

Some of my friends think I should be with someone who is whatever their mate or boyfriend or friend is to them.  They want me to have someone close to me but someone they approve of.    Oddly, I know enough about their relationships that I would never want to trade places with them.   But they love me and want the best for me.

Do I have everything I want right now?  No.  I’m not sure I ever will.   But I am closer now to having everything I have ever wanted than I have ever been in the past.  No one seemed worried about me getting hurt when I was in a bad relationship, but they worry when I’m in a good one?    Getting hurt is a risk any time you give your heart, regardless of the type or texture of the relationship.  I’ve been just as hurt in platonic female relationships as in romantic male relationships, and I never saw it coming until the relationship was gone, gone, gone forever.

I can say it doesn’t matter to me what others think, but it does matter to me what people I care about think.  I want to believe they’re behind me, even when they disagree with the choices I make.  I certainly don’t agree with their choices, but I know it doesn’t matter as long as they’re happy, even with occasional relationship turbulence in their lives.  I wish others could rally behind me like I’ve rallied behind them, not judging their choices in life, but short of that, I’m just very glad to have one person who does rally behind me.

Photo copyright by Sergey Yeliseev; creative commons license

This trio of articles covers finding out how the partial solar eclipse of November 25, 2011 might affect you astrologically by looking at parallel and related eclipses, house placement, and planets in conjunction or opposition to the eclipse.

Here’s Part 3: 

3. Planets in conjunction/opposition to eclipse

Since I covered this scariness of an eclipse hitting exact on the degree or opposite degree of a planet back in January 2008 and in several subsequent posts, I’ll quote from what I’ve written previously and then tell you what to look at for this eclipse.

So what happens when an eclipse conjuncts one of your natal planets?  Some people say it’s like the transformational blast/upset of Pluto acting on that planet.  In other words, if the eclipse is at the same degree as a particular planet in your birthchart, then the life areas represented by that planet will be where you have a sudden upset…more like a nuclear strike on that planet.  

Or so some say.  But let’s look into my chart for the past few years, as well as my private journals, and see what was shaping up for me then.

Ah, how about 28 August 2007?   The lunar eclipse was at…4 degrees Pisces.  Strange….that’s the exact degree of my Ascendant.  What was happening in my life that day?  Well, the first thing was a couple of emails asking if I was going bankrupt and closing Spilled Candy, and within 48 hours, there were 1000’s of people screaming at me on MySpace, calling me all sorts of very un-nice things and emailing lies about me.  A lot of wonderful people came to my defense, too, and knew how difficult those days were for me because of  family health issues and a few close friends knew I was having major problems getting oxygen at that time, but for the most part, nobody knew I was having all the symptoms of heart failure.  But that one particular day was a bolt of out the blue when things just couldn’t have hit any harder or any worse as far as my reputation.  And what does the Ascendant represent?  How the outer world sees you.  Oh, and just for grins, it was also conjunct a fixed star that represents destructiveness and sorrow.

So here are the past few years’ big eclipses, those big drama-producers.  Keep in mind that some say that lunar eclipses tear down and get rid of while solar eclipses regenerate.  Hmmm, yes, a lot of Pluto similarities in that idea.

Let’s try 14 March 2006, with a lunar eclipse at 14 Virgo.  Exact conjunction with my Black Moon Lilith.  That was the day I realized something had been going on behind my back and ended the relationship.  My instincts caused me to ask a particular question and the answer I got shocked me.  It was a major event for me, and one that changed the course of my life.

How about 29 March 2006?  Solar eclipse at 8 Aries 35.  The closest in my chart would have been Eris, the asteroid that represents sexuality, but the conjunction wasn’t exact.  My records don’t show anything substantive occuring that day.

Let’s try 7 September 2006, with a lunar eclipse at 15 Pisces.  Nope, nothing close.   The solar eclipse two weeks later at 29 Virgo?  Nope, nothing close BUT a friend with Pluto at that exact degree had a major death/rebirth issue that day.

Moving into 2007,  let’s look at 3 March with a lunar eclipse on my birthday at 13 Virgo.  Close to my Black Moon Lilith but off by a degree.  No major trauma or drama that day. Meanwhile, the 18 March solar eclipse at 28 Pisces wasn’t close to anything and passed uneventfully as well.

The 28 August eclipse, I’ve already discussed, but how about the one right after, on 11 September when the solar eclipse at 18 Virgo 24 was to mean regeneration?  Interesting.  I have my Vertex (turning points) at 18 Virgo 42. which is pretty darned exact. Were there any turning points in my life then?  Yes, a personal one.  I remember the date because of a letter I received.  It was a good thing, regenerating in a very nice way.

So here we are in 2008 with some eclipses coming up.  Am I nervous?  Hell, yeah.  Excited, too.  I went a little farther back in my own charts than I’m showing here because there are details I don’t care to share, but what I’m seeing is that, in general, when the eclipse is exact to something in my chart, rather than even a degree off, there is a dramatic effect in that area of my life.  If the eclipse is lunar, then yes, it does seem to be about things being destroyed whereas solar eclipses tend to bring new life into those areas of my life.

 

And from another article in June 2010:

If I fast forward, the next two significant eclipses for me personally occurred  in August 2008, which  was conjunct my Natal Jupiter/Mars.  That eclipse heralded a tremendous expansion in how I saw relationships and what I knew was possible as well as how I thought about sexuality.  The following January 2009, an eclipse was conjunct my Natal Saturn, and oh, but yes, it was definitely a time of constriction and hard lessons.  Saturn is definitely a teacher, and especially when given a power burst by an eclipse.

This June 26, 2010 eclipse is conjunct Pluto in capricorn, so externally, we all have the possibility of big change in structures, governments, and institutions.  This is the equivalent of a Pluto-Pluto conjunction, which we humans will experience around the moment of birth!  But on a personal level, internally, this eclipse might get your attention in an extra-strong way if you have a conjunction or opposition.  How?  Here are a few ways it might manifest for different celestial bodies:

Sun:  who you are, your personality

Ascendant:  how you appear to the world

Moon: emotions, Mother

Mercury: communications, intellect, mental processes

Venus: romance, creativity, finances

Mars: sex, aggression

Jupiter: expansion, business,

Saturn: constriction, lessons

Uranus: shake-ups, bolts from the blue

Neptune:  spirituality, deception, illusion, uncertainty

Pluto: regeneration, death and rebirth

Chiron: wounding/healing

Juno:  marriage

Lilith: addictions,  instincts

This November 25 eclipse of 2011 isn’t conjunct any of the above.  However, there are a few interesting connections to watch.  It’s conjunct (within minutes) the fixed star known as Dschubba, which correlates to mass catastrophe, sudden assaults, immorality, and battle skills.  In opposition, within 1 degree, is Mirfak, which represents meteorological events affects large numbers of people.  Sounds a little ominious, yes, but not nearly as bad for everyone as the one last June of 2010!

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This trio of articles covers finding out how  the partial solar eclipse of November 25, 2011 might affect you astrologically by looking at parallel and related eclipses, house placement, and planets in conjunction or opposition to the eclipse. 

2.  House Placement

Where does this eclipse occur in your natal chart?  In other words, which of the 12 “houses” of your astrological chart will be most affected?  A house is like an area, sector, or theme of your life. 

Here are the 12 houses and what areas of your life they represent:

First house:  self, ego

Second house:  values, possessions, money, self-worth

Third house:  siblings, neighborhood/community environment, communications

Fourth house:  home,  domestic situation, can mean the mother but in some situations the mother is represented in the Tenth house and the father in the fourth

Fifth house:  romance, children, creative expression, play

Sixth house:  daily life/routine/tasks, health, skills/jobs (not career)

Seventh house: committed partnerships (marriage or business), legal relationships, open enemies

Eight house:  sex, joint finances, regneration, death, transformation, occult

Ninth house:  travel, knowledge/education, foreign cultures, religion, law

Tenth house:  career, the father (though sometimes the mother), authority, Government

Eleventh house:  goals/hopes, friends, groups

Twelfth house:  mysticism/spirituality, hospitals, prisons, secrets, hidden things, unknown enemies

To find out which houses are affected, you must know what’s in your chart.  If you don’t already know, go to astro.com and create your own natal chart (it’s free) using your place of birth, birth time, and birth date.  You must know your approximate birth time and place or this exercise will NOT be accurate. 

Look on your chart for  the house that 2 degrees of Sagittarius occurs in.  This is where you’ll most feel the effects.  Then look at where 2 degrees Gemini shows up in your chart–opposite of the eclipse.  This house will also be strongly affected.  

 If you don’t know how to find this at astro.com, then I recommend you find an astrologer to pay for this information (I don’t do this, sorry, so please don’t ask).

Continuing my example from the previous article in this trio, my own themes are playing out in travel/education expansion and local community and communications, with the eclipse occuring right smack dab in the middle of my Ninth house and the middle of  its opposite house, the Third.  Combined with looking at parallel eclipses and house placement, I’m most likely to feel that pull between my neighborhood and travel over the next few months.  In fact, it’s already shaping up that way….